


Gotta Fly (Before You Can Run)

by tisfan



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Animal Transformation, M/M, Save the planet, Shapeshifting, Social Commentary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 21:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20124472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Today is the day everyone finds out what animal they’ll be able to shift into for the rest of their lives. Tony is sure he’s going to be a dung beetle.Tony Stark Bingo Square: K3 - AnthropomorphicBucky Barnes Bingo Square: C5 - Bucky Bear





	Gotta Fly (Before You Can Run)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monobuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/gifts), [rebelmeg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelmeg/gifts).

The Choosing ceremony was, like many ceremonies, Very Serious, solemn, and Important. Which meant long, boring, and ostentatious.

Tony looked around at all the initiates. Most of them were not paying attention to the Speaker for the Animals, either. They were chatting with their friends, or placing wagers, or worriedly pacing around the amphitheater. Some were near the walls, talking with family members who were leaning over the edge to give an encouraging hand (or snack) to a prospective child.

If nothing else, after the Ceremony, Tony was rarely -- if ever -- going to have to deal with his father again. Unless he turned out, also, to be a weasel.

“If I turn out to be a weasel, I am going to go pick a fight with Loki,” Tony said to his group of friends. All, you know, three of them. Loki had been one of their classmates, until his Choosing came early, in the form of a bright, emerald green snake. Very poisonous.

“Pretty sure that’s a mongoose and not a weasel, Tony,” Pepper said, smoothing out her skirt. “You’re not a weasel.”

“I could be,” Tony said. “Howard’s a weasel.”

“Kids only got like a twenty-five percent chance of takin’ after a parent, if that high. And you don’t act like Howard,” Bucky Barnes said, reasonably. “You’ve got just as much chance of being a dove, like your ma.”

Tony was pretty sure the peaceful, contented, beautiful dove wasn’t going to suit him; not at all. He was not the sit around and coo after someone else’s achievements type. 

Tony loved his mother; he didn’t want to _ be _ his mother. Being a dove might almost be worse than taking after Howard. Honestly, it was a wonder Howard hadn’t eaten his mom in one of those cross-breed mating goes wrong stories that always came up on the news.

“Easy for you to be relaxed,” Tony said. “You’ve got like a four hundred percent chance of being a bear.”

Bucky leaned back in the grass and looked up in the sky. “Barnes’ have been bears since there were Barnes’ and bears. Which doesn’t mean _ anything _. I got a cousin who’s a horse. The Avatars make their own choices.”

“What if I’m something tiny and stupid, like a field mouse, or… or… or a shrew?” Tony worried. “You can’t be boyfriends with me if I’m a shrew, you could eat me for lunch.”

“If I’m a bear,” Bucky said. “Besides, if I was a bear, and you were a shrew, you’d be a lot too small to be lunch. You could pull thorns out of my paw or something.”

“That’s just a bunch of speciest garbage anyway,” Pepper said. “My parents are a cat and a bluebird and Mom has never, ever even _ threatened _to eat Dad, even when his bluebird of happiness routine was getting on everyone’s nerves.”

“Somehow, I always thought your mom was the bird,” Rhodey said. “Don’t worry, Tones, you’re gonna be something amazing. Like a moose.”

“Ha ha, I’m not even Canadian,” Tony said. “What do you think you’re gonna be?”

“I am going to be a _ skunk _, and then none of you motherfuckers are gonna mess with me, like ever again,” Rhodey said.

“Skunks are cute,” Pepper said. “Well, they are--” she defended when Rhodey and Bucky and Tony all burst into laughter.

“What do you want to be, Tony?” Bucky asked him.

“That’s the romantic garbage,” Tony said. “The idea that you can pick your animal. The Avatars choose, we don’t get a say in it.”

Like everything else in his life; Tony didn’t know why he continued to rail about it being unfair. With the general state of unfairness he’d thus far experienced, he didn’t know why one more unfair thing was such a shock.

“Yeah, but that’s not what I asked you. I asked you what you wanted to be,” Bucky said. “You can tell a lot about a person by what Avatar they think would suit them.”

“I dunno,” Tony said. “I’ve been so busy thinking about what I don’t want. Knowing me, I’ll probably be something little and useless and weird. Like, I dunno, a marmoset.”

“Why are you so worried about being little? It’s not like you have to spend your whole life in your animal form or nothin’.”

“Look at you,” Tony said, waving at Bucky… well, everything. “You’re huge. Your Avatar’s gonna be huge, and I’m going to be some rinky dink little critter and…”

“I will still want you to be my boyfriend if you end up being a dung beetle.”

“Is that possible?” Tony wondered. “-- does anyone actually become a bug?”

“Janet Van Dyne is a wasp,” Pepper said. 

“Great. I’m gonna be a dung beetle,” Tony said, mournfully. 

“And I’ve already said I will still want to date you,” Bucky pointed out. “Besides, if you’re a dung beetle, Howard won’t want you in the house at all. You’ll be free of him, at least. And, dung beetles are great astronomers. Like, all the great ones were beetles.”

“You’re making that up,” Tony said.

“Am not. It’s like most of the astronauts in the US are all from Ohio. It’s a statistic. Don’t you read the pamphlets we get for this shit?” Bucky asked.

“No?” Like, how was that even a question? It was like reading the assignments for your body and you in middle school. Tony already knew what a boner was, and to be smart and wrap it up before sticking it in someone, so what was 5th grade life sciences going to teach him? Turned out, nothing and all wrong anyway, so there was that.

“You think they’ll make us line up alphabetical order?” Pepper asked, suddenly. “I don’t want to. I want to stay with you guys until the very last minute.”

“Nah, we just line up,” Rhodey said. “Carol told me. She went last year.”

“They’re finally done talking,” Bucky said. “Come on, stand up. I want to get this over with. I hear the party after is amazing. We’ll all be actual adults and stuff.”

“An adult dung beetle,” Tony said. “Sure, why not? Should be fun.”

Bucky let Pepper and Rhodey pull ahead. “Nothing is gonna change how I feel about you, doll,” he said, seriously. “I don’t even care. We could be cats and dogs, living together, the end of the world, and I’d still want to spend it with you.”

“Even if I’m something revolting?”

“You won’t be anything revolting,” Bucky said, “because you’re going to be you, no matter what animal you are. None of the Avatars are _ revolting _.”

“Howard is revolting,” Tony said.

“That’s because he’s Howard, not because he’s a weasel. He could be a damn golden eagle and he’d still be a shit human being,” Bucky said.

“What about a spider?” Tony demanded. “I hate spiders. I could end up being a spider and I’d literally freak myself out, like constantly.”

“Tony, it’s gonna be okay.”

“Promise?” Like Bucky could ever promise such a thing.

“I promise.”

***

"Stark, Anthony Edward," someone said, checking him off the list of this year's kids. Handed Tony another pamphlet._ Your avatar and you: your new responsibilities as the representative of your animal. _

They'd almost destroyed the planet and everyone in it when the first Choosing happened. One in every hundred or so people became psychically linked to a dying species, able to transform at will, able to communicate with the animals that were dying.

When the president of the United States became a god damn polar bear on national television, people started getting serious about saving them.

"I hope I don't become a cow," Tony said to the official. "I'm not ready to give up eating meat."

"Go down that hall and pick an open door," the official said. 

"Any door? What if it's the wrong one?"

"Name?" The guy moved on to the next person in line. Well maybe if Tony picked the wrong door, he wouldn't get an Avatar at all. Were there any people left who were rejected by the entire animal kingdom? Trust Tony to be a pioneer in the field of screwing up, yet again.

Tony passed the first open door, because obviously the first one was the wrong choice, no matter what the deciding factor actually was. Couldn’t be too eager. He walked down the hallway, and he couldn’t see anyone and he couldn’t hear anyone else, and some of the doors were open and some were closed, and really, this building was not so large, he should have come to the end of the hall, eventually. 

He looked back, but all he could see was empty hallway.

“This is some sort of test,” he decided. Psychics. God.

_ Avatars _.

Tony ran for a while, thinking he could possibly outrun the test; scientific method. Discard the easy solutions first.

That didn’t work. 

Tony knelt down near the wall, peering at it. “It’s curved. It’s an illusion, this hallway is a giant circle!”

_ Why? _

“Come and talk to me about it, Master Anthony,” a familiar voice said, and Tony found himself headed for a door without even thinking. Jarvis, oh, god, he’d missed Jarvis, so much, these last few years.

He stopped at the edge of the door. “No, this is a trap, this is a test.”

“This is a familiar form,” the not-Jarvis said from the middle of the room, and he didn’t look much like the white-haired old butler that Tony knew, but a young man in his prime. The man Howard Stark saved on a battlefield during the War. “And one that you know, to talk about-- all this. Someone you trust.”

“I certainly don’t trust you, if you’re taking on that form.”

“Would you prefer another, darling?” And that was his mother.

“Not really, no,” Tony said. “What’s with the tricks, the pretending. I thought you just made your choice.”

“You’re difficult,” and that was Howard. Tony’s hands balled up into fists at his sides. “So clever. So capable. You’re one… one who could change the world.”

“Yeah, I get that all the time, since I was four, not living up to my potential, right,” Tony said.

“We know how to nurture your potential. All you have to do is say yes,” another voice said. He didn’t know that one, and he turned to look.

“Oh.”

She smiled at him, in a way that he would never have thought a smile could happen, a sense of a smile, and not a mere upturn of lips that anyone could fake. A real smile. A pure…

“Yes.”

***

It was strange, how many of his friends Tony recognized, even in their Avatar forms. There was Clint as a scruffy yellow dog, and Steve as a huge bald eagle. Sam was another bird, this one a falcon. 

“Tony!” A fluffy ball of red fur barreled over to him. “You were gone for, like, ever in there, what happened?”

Tony turned and ruffled his feathers a little.

The red panda -- Bucky, quite obviously -- startled backward, arms and legs flailing as he gasped in shock. He rolled around awkwardly on the ground for a moment, before getting up onto hind feet to shriek at Tony.

“Oh, god, stop being so _ dramatic _, I didn’t scare you.” Tony tipped his head to inspect a shiny bit of metal on the ground.

“You’re a--”

“Attempted murder,” Rhodey said. “Murder of one?”

“_ Raven _,” Tony said. “Ha, ha. What happened to skunk?”

“Hey, male platypuses have damn _ poison sacks _ in their dew claw. I’m not complaining,” Rhodey said.

“You look like a duck got together with a ferret,” Tony said.

“Don’t make me hurt you, bird-brain,” Rhodey threatened.

“Oh, would you two stop, you know you love each other, best friends forever, right?” Pepper fussed at them. 

“Wow, okay, wow, you are a very big lady cat,” Rhodey said, staring up at the lioness.

“I don’t love him, are you kidding?” Tony said, shaking his tailfeathers a little. “I love _ Bucky _.”

“Look at me,” Bucky said, running around in a little circle, showing off long black legs, a cute little mask and a puffy tail. “Also, I’m arboreal, which means we won’t have much problems with living, because you’re a bird, and you live in trees, and I’m a tree climber--”

“Also, terrified of falling, I remember reading that somewhere,” Rhodey said. “Which seems a bit dumb for a species that lives in the trees, but you do you, fuzzbutt.”

“Of course my butt is _ fuzzy _ , I’m a _ panda _. Which is not a bear, but don’t tell my sister that, I’ll never live it down.”

“You are not exactly lacking in the butt fuzz either, here, weirdo,” Tony said. “In fact, I am the only one of the group who does not have a fuzzy butt.”

“Also, you can fly, that’s totally cool,” Bucky said. “Go one, take a lap.”

“Sometimes you gotta fly before you can run,” Tony said.

“That does not make any sense,” Pepper protested, but Tony launched himself into the air, stretching muscles he didn’t even know he had. He made a circle around the room and then landed on Bucky’s head. 

“I can fly!”

“You certainly can,” Bucky said, reaching up one soft-seeming paw to pat him gently. “You can fly.

**Author's Note:**

> there was some art for this, I'm going to try to post elsewhere, because it's cute art, but it's coming up sideways on A03 and I have No Idea Why -- like no matter which way I save the image, it comes up nose down. weird.
> 
> [Art is posted here](https://tisfan.tumblr.com/post/186795702744/title-gotta-fly-before-you-can-run-square-tony)


End file.
